In which Miranda Devine does nothing, and Cory Bernardi sells mugs ...

(Above: short of a mug? Wanting a Cory Bernardi mug, but Cory Bernardi isn't personally available? Why not get a Cory Bernardi mug, personally autographed by Cory, and then each time you sip that latte, you can remember that you're putting that mug Cory Bernardi to your lips).

Here at the pond, we've come up with what we think is the best "great big new tax" of the moment.

Any politician using the phrase "great big new tax" will be taxed a dollar. Budget surplus? A breeze ... The way Abbott and his parrots are going we'll be up a squillion.

What was that they said about sound bites and talking down to the electorate?

As a bonus, it's hoped that this tax might help dedicated users cut back on their reliance on the phrase, thereby producing a little peace and quiet, rather than the squawking in recent times from the cocky's cage, but some have already suggested its users are hooked even more than nicotine users now forced to pay up a great big new tax, and therefore revenue to the exchequer is as safe as houses, might even continue to boom.

Meanwhile, we regret that the adolescent tone of recent days - the great big new gerbil week - has had to be terminated.

We're standing by for a serious report on what to do about peace in the middle east, and it comes from Miranda the Devine, under the header Why 'balance of terror' feels safer than the peace process.

What to do Miranda?

... leaving well enough alone is a diplomatic maxim that might save more pain.

Yep, the best way forward is to do nothing. It's all the fault of the Palestinians. They need to sort themselves out. George Mitchell is wasting his time. Better to do nothing than stir the possum.

Now that's what we call a decisive initiative. Leave well enough alone. Don't prod a rattler. Let sleeping dogs lie. Remember never to poke at a possum. Leave the trap door spider to spin its web ... and so on and so forth.

Now you might think this is a strange posture for a radical activist like Miranda the Devine to take - after all, she's happy to suggest that the rogering of gerbils should come to an end, so you think she might have a view on the Berlin wall being transplanted to the middle east, and Israel indulging in a vigorous and humiliating occupation, but 'do nothing' is the cry. Leave well enough alone.

Well if the middle east is well enough, surely we should leave everything alone.

Ah dear, she owes these insights to Khaled Abu Toameh, but as usual, if you want a better insight into such matters, you're better off heading off to his wiki here. Meanwhile, is it wrong to wish that the Devine had stuck to advising people on the matter of rogering gerbils? Would it be safer than her desire to roger Palestinians and the middle east peace process?

Shush, children, hush, we've decided to do nothing, and leave Miranda alone. With her gerbils.

Meanwhile, you'd have to be wearing a burqa not to notice the way the French burqa controversy has erupted on these shores.

In one camp is Elizabeth Farrelly with Let's face facts, the burqa is an affront to feminism. In the other camp, there's John Birmingham with The burqa's not unAustralian, but banning it sure is.

We look forward to the day Birmingham wears the burqa for a month in all outings to show his solidarity with the sisterhood, and to discover what he's actually talking about.

But you thought that might be the end of it. Wrong, there's Dick Gross, token atheist for party occasions, arguing fiercely for tolerance in Going berko about the burqa.

Beginning to think there might be a burqa led recovery for commentariat columnists?

Sure enough. A couple of days ago over in new matilda, Shakira Hussein blessed us with Here We Go Again ... This Time It's Burqa Bandits.

He was of course responding to Cory Bernardi, a well known Liberal resident of the pond, even if it's part of our South Australian backwater, who turned up on the ABC's Drum unleashed to drum up Burka bandits justify a burka ban.

And that's just the start of it. The whole world is in a burqa uproar, and no one knows how to spell it. Is it burqa or burka or burga? Until we actually know what it is, since a word is what it describes, and so a mis-spelled word doesn't describe the thing it describes (oh okay, just having fun), how can we talk about it in a meaningful way? You say tomatoe burqa and I say tohmatoh burka ...

Meanwhile, thanks to the burqa fuss, it turns out that Cory Bernardi has his very own blog and website which offers Cory Bernardi merchandise with personal signature attached.

Bugger me dead. You too can have a Cory Bernardi fridge magnet, or a Cory Bernardi sticker (and pay five bucks for the privilege), or a Cory Bernardi cap, or a Cory Bernardi golf shirt to tickle your fellow members while tickling the till for twenty two bucks fifty, or best of all a Cory Bernardi mug for a humble, modest fourteen bucks fifty. Damn it, you can never have enough mugs in your life, and surely Cory Bernardi is the mug for you.

But I digress. It wouldn't be a decent day if we didn't drop in on The Punch, Australia's reliably cheapskate conversation, and sure enough there's Tory Shepherd getting terribly excited in We're all going on a Sharia holiday.

I’m going, for the first time, to somewhere with sharia law. Alcohol is illegal, adulterers can be stoned, public floggings occur, and I’ll have to wear a jilbab (headscarf) and ankle-length skirts.

Oh no, she's off to Aceh, in the deepest dead heart of darkness of Indonesia, a voyage which would make Colonel Walter Kurtz and even Joseph Conrad flinch in fear. There are dragons there, and they eat orang asing for lunch.

And after a bout of piety about diversity and the need to learn about sharia law and to engage with our neighbours and the need to support women's rights, Tory makes sure we all know where she stands:

... then you get something like Senator Cory Bernardi’s call to ban the burqa - a call he says is echoed by the majority of the population.

All of a sudden Australia could be seen to be saying that women should not have the right to dress as they choose, that we want police to be enforcing a dress code.

All of a sudden Australia stops looking like a beacon of freedom, and starts looking more like an oppressive society.

Funny. That's right at the bottom of a column that announces with what might be fear, or trepidation or pride, how Tory in the name of engagement and commitment to women's rights, is going to have to wear a jilbab (headscarf) and ankle-length skirts while in Aceh.

Is this a coded way of saying that all of a sudden Indonesia stops looking like a beacon of new found democracy and starts looking more like an oppressive society?

Never mind, you can't expect logic when it comes to dress codes, and who can now remember the fine old days when the nuns would get out a ruler to measure the length of the school dress, to make sure it stayed a discreet level above the ground? Come to that, who can remember what a good old penguin nee Dominican nun looked like, dressed up in that Fellini garb.

Come to that, who can remember the Bondi beach patrol, and its fierce response to bikinis?

Thanks to Waverley Council, you can get a pdf on those grand days here. Let me tease you with an excerpt:

In 1945 an unnamed woman braved the Bondi promenade wearing a bikini in and according to a Sunday Telegraph report in 1946 'caused a near riot'. Waverley Council Lifeguard (then known as Beach Inspectors) Aub Laidlaw told her she was indecently attired and ordered her to changing sheds at Bondi Pavilion with instructions to put on some more clothes.

She was later charged with offensive behaviour. Another newspaper report recounts this same story but with this first bikini girl appearing on the beach in September 1946, yet another newspaper report claims October that year with the girl in the bikini being mobbed by 'hundreds of young surfers'

Aub Laidlaw is remembered that event in an interview with the Daily Mirror 19 April 1984:
"I remember the first girl I ordered off was a medium sized brunette from Darren St, Lidcombe. The beach telegraph had got around before I caught up to her and the mob was round her. We had to escort her out the back door of the pavilion [Bondi Pavilion] to a tram."

All gone now, Tony Abbott in budgie smugglers, young things dressed like starlets auditioning to become Lindsay Lohan, and a discreet cross on the lapel for the nuns, and that's it. You have to go into the wilds of Africa or South America or other frontier religious challenges to see nuns dressing like nuns.

But here's the thing. I'm a little bit up in the air about all this. As an atheist, I'd cheerfully ban all exterior signs of religion in public places, just as I'd cheerfully ban Cory Bernardi ... or at least try to mount a case for a decent tax on them.

What I want is a field report, preferably from one of the men involved in the debate, who love to announce what women should be wearing. Do a month in a burqa. Go about your business for a month, and then report back on how it feels to dress like this in Australia. Think a month's too long? Heck, why not do it for a week then.

You know, gritty, embedded field reporting, perhaps stationed in Auburn, or some other suitable locale. Sure the voice might be a giveaway, but hey, remember Jack Lemmon could do it well enough to earn a marriage proposal in Some Like It Hot. And it didn't stop Tony Curtis from scoring with Marilyn Monroe, so your manhood's safe.

Go for it.

If John Safran can attempt to pass for black, in a long and noble line of reporters and actors who cross the black white barrier, why not an intrepid antipodean hack? And at last you'd know something whereof you scribble about ...

Richard Pryor Thinks Hes White Hilarious - The best video clips are here